Martha Graham Quotes - Page 3

You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

It's what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.

Some of you are doomed to be artists.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.

I've relaxed my feelings about other companies performing my works. I have never in principle been against my ballets being danced by other companies. Rather, it is that we lack the time, space and money to insure that they are done well. To me, the only sin is mediocrity.

I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don't know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

If I can't dance, I don't care if my dances are ever done again!

What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.

There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.

The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

Discipline is liberation.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.

The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.